Run yearly by the Australian Conservation Foundation,

Children from across the country are invited to create an original artwork of one of Australia's many threatened native animals or plants, along with a short written component on their chosen threatened species.

The competition is a fantastic opportunity for primary school children to unleash their artistic creativity while learning about Australia's threatened animals and plants.

If you have children who love art, they may really enjoy taking part in this competition

An international team of researchers, including experts from Monash University, has developed a world-first, commercially sized tandem solar cell that eliminates the need for a scarce and expensive metal.

The breakthrough... replaces costly indium-based oxide with abundant tin oxide. The new material costs just one per cent of the price of indium, achieving this dramatic cost reduction without sacrificing the solar cell’s performance.

(Tandem cells capture more of the solar spectrum by stacking multiple layers with different bandgaps.)

Interesting article, definitely talking their book though.

The interplay between climate goals and maintaining some sort of geopolitical agency is getting very complicated.

As winters become less predictable, Australia's ski resorts are turning to manufactured snow to keep the slopes open.

The environment minister Murray Watt’s approval of the project last year was met with fury from conservationists and the Greens.

The approval, allowing Woodside’s Karratha gas processing plant to operate until 2070, has been described as a “carbon bomb” and according to ACF would see about 4bn tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere – equivalent to about 10 years of Australia’s annual emissions.

The gas plant operates beside the Murujuga indigenous rock art complex – a landscape of more than a million petroglyphs dating back 50,000 years, including the oldest known image of a human face.

The article gives a summary of various alternative fuels being developed in Australia.

While Australia’s rapid electrification is critical for net-zero targets and resilience across Australia’s energy system, it cannot solve the entire equation.

Hard-to-abate sectors – including aviation, heavy industry, agriculture and mining – face challenges relating to the use of electricity at the scales and temperatures required. Major fuel users require scalable and affordable alternative fuels to lower emissions while safeguarding operational continuity.

According to CSIRO’s research director – energy technologies Dr Daniel Roberts, who presented on a panel at the recent SAF APAC (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) Summit in Melbourne, supporting and enabling the alternative fuel transition requires a shift in mindset.

“There is no such thing as a single solution approach for a challenge of this magnitude,” Dr Roberts said. “Ultimately we will rely on a balanced portfolio of feedstocks and technologies, with each being evaluated on a case-by-case basis from the perspectives of scale, deployment time, feedstock availability, and cost.”

https://www.energymagazine.com.au/from-canola-to-ammonia-mapping-australias-alternative-fuel-pathways/

"We've got a bunch of hollows and stuff that we're going to put inside there and create them some really cool little dens so that they feel as safe as they possibly can inside the enclosures."

Dr Cummings said another part of the preparatory work was making sure the sanctuary had food for the quolls if the poultry industry was affected by bird flu.

"We're building up a little stockpile of chickens and rabbits and kangaroo meat and things like that so ... we've got some food on hand to feed these critters while we've got them," he said.

Scott Reef, off the Kimberley Coast of WA, is one of the wildest places left in Australian waters.

Woodside’s Browse gas project threatens this underwater marvel—proposing to drill for gas just 3km from the Reef.

But that’s not all. Thousands of kilometers away, the Great Barrier Reef faces an extra 29.35 million dead coral colonies during every future bleaching event due to the climate pollution caused by the Browse project, which is estimated to emit a staggering 1.6 billion tonnes of emissions over the lifetime of the project.

The government has agreed to accept public submissions on whether it should consider the impacts of climate pollution from the Woodside gas project on the Great Barrier Reef.

We [Wilderness Society) say it’s a no brainer. The government must take this significant impact on both iconic reefs into consideration. Add your name to our submission today to amplify our voices.

Submissions close 22 July 2026.

I am lucky enough to have red-necked wallabies visit my place and I love the way they stand very still looking at me to make sure I am no threat. I'm not but vehicle drivers on the streets around my place often are. I've pulled off a dead wallaby and a friend helped me to get another badly-injured one to the vet where it was put down. Other neighbours have had similar experiences. What a terrible feeling it is to see these and other beautiful native animals dead by the side of the road. If cars weren't bad enough, wallabies face other threats.

Australia's larger kangaroos are generally widespread, mobile, able to use a range of open habitats and capable of fending off predators. Our wallabies are far more particular. Some depend on rocky ranges and escarpments. Others need dense woodland or particular patches of arid-country vegetation. Their smaller ranges and more specialised habitats make them especially vulnerable when Country is cleared, fragmented, overgrazed, or affected by climate change and catastrophic bushfires.

Many smaller wallabies also fall within, or close to, Australia’s notorious “critical weight range”: mammals weighing roughly 35 grams to 5.5 kilograms that are particularly devastated by foxes and feral cats.

For more interesting info and great photos of various types have a look at this article: https://www.lyrebirddreaming.com/post/our-other-wallabies?cid=041a981b-853b-4355-a7b0-1182c033c5f6

You might also like this video, Fight to save the endangered [Victorian] southern brush-tailed rock wallaby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd3Q0uGKcDc

Climate change has lengthened Australia’s fire season and has already seen an increase in the number of days where the risk of fire is high. It’s a familiar narrative around the world.

EDIT: Australia’s expertise and experience in bushfires has meant its fire services have in recent years regularly shared personnel and equipment with the United States and Canada, and vice versa.

One of Australia’s large air tankers has been on the US west coast helping fight fires in recent weeks, and will be followed by almost 70 personnel next week.

“Around the world we are seeing conditions we haven’t seen before,” says Shepherd. “The more we all learn from each other, the better it is for us all around the globe.”

More than 30,000 fire ant nests have been destroyed on Gold Coast council land since 2022, but the acting mayor says his confidence in full eradication remains "pretty low".

yeah, like cane toad eradication

Clean Energy Investor Outlook report

A study tracked 40 bearded dragons using hand-sewn outfits fitted with sensors that monitored movement, temperature and acceleration.

The study found faster lizards were more likely to die than slower ones.

They're blooming quick! If for no other reason, have a look in the article at a pretty funny old video of a couple of blokes and a ute trying to catch a wombat. 🤣

I also found out if a wombat is chased by a dingo or a dog, "the wombat will block off the entrance to its burrow with its incredibly hard bum." 🤣

Australia's brown huntsman spiders are the fastest, according to a study, yet to be peer-reviewed, of 258 species.

According to the study, huntsman spiders can move at 3.59 metres per second.

More research is needed to confirm if there are other, faster species out there that have not been investigated.

For non-Aussies reading this, don't be afraid, a hunstman spider won't hunt you down and bite you though it might beat you in a race. It only eats insects.

Most people have no idea of the work that wildlife carers do. These are volunteers that give an enormous amount of their time, care and money to rescuing and rehabilitating our injured and orphaned native animals.

This article gives a pretty good description with a lot of photos. I hope you enjoy it.

Jay encourages people to support their local wildlife rescue group, ensuring donations directly assist the volunteers caring for wildlife in their own communities.

https://backyardsforbiodiversity.org/blog/f/champions-of-biodiversity-meet-jay-the-glider-guardian

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49266190

Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior (1985)

Wed Jul 10, 1985

Image: The Rainbow Warrior in Marsden Wharf in Auckland Harbour after the bombing by French secret service agents. © Greenpeace / John Miller [greenpeace.org]

On this day in 1985, the French government, in an act of state-sponsored terror, bombed the Greenpeace-operated boat Rainbow Warrior, which was en route to protest a nuclear weapons test planned by the French state. The bombing, later found to be personally ordered by French President François Mitterrand, killed a freelance photographer on board named Fernando Pereira.

France had been testing nuclear weapons on the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia since 1966. In 1985 eight South Pacific countries, including New Zealand and Australia, signed a treaty declaring the region a nuclear-free zone.

Since being acquired by Greenpeace in 1977, Rainbow Warrior was active in supporting a number of anti-nuclear testing campaigns during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including relocating 300 Marshall Islanders from Rongelap Atoll, which had been polluted by radioactive fallout by past American nuclear tests.

For the 1985 tests, Greenpeace intended to monitor the impact of nuclear tests and place protesters on the island to observe the blasts. Three undercover French agents were on board, however, and they attached two limpet mines to Rainbow Warrior and detonated them ten minutes apart, sinking the ship.

France initially denied responsibility, but two of the French agents were captured by New Zealand Police and charged with arson, conspiracy to commit arson, willful damage, and murder.

The resulting scandal led to the resignation of the French Defence Minister Charles Hernu, while the two agents pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to ten years in prison. They spent a little over two years confined to the French island of Hao before being freed by the French government.

In 1987, after international pressure, France paid $8.16m to Greenpeace in damages, which helped finance another ship. It also paid compensation to the Pereira family, making reparation payments of 650,000 francs to Pereira's wife, 1.5 million francs to his two children, and 75,000 francs to each of his parents.

• Date: 1985-07-10
• Learn More: www.greenpeace.org, en.wikipedia.org, www.zinnedproject.org.
• Tags: #Terrorism, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

I hope the authorities read this article.

The advice makes a lot of sense. As it says, "Failing to plan is planning to fail"